Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Ghost Whisperer through the current episode, “Save Our Souls,” originally broadcast October 24th, 2008.

Although I realize we are only four episodes in, at the moment “Save Our Souls” is my favorite episode of Season Four. Everything came together to make a fantastic episode. If not for the one short scene with Eli, it may have been a perfect episode. For once, Melinda and Jim were on equal footing, in terms of both the number of scenes they were in and the amount of fact-finding they did. And to think, from the episode previews I thought it would be Speed 2: Cruise Control meets, well, Ghost Whisperer. But it was a little more than that.

Going in, I assumed “Save Our Souls” would just be another ghost-of-the-week installment. And at first it did appear that would be the case. Melinda and Jim were embarking on a three-day cruise aboard the S.S. Coridon, soon to be scrapped, in order for Melinda ot pick up some antiques for the shop. Only moments after stepping aboard ship, Melinda was seeing ghosts all over the place. There was an amusing in-joke early on when a ghost compared Melinda to Audrey Hepburn (Jennifer Love Hewitt starred in The Audrey Hepburn Story, a made-for-TV movie, in 2000). And just for good measure, Melinda and Jim were bunking next to a newlywed couple, Rich and Julia, on their honeymoon experiencing problems in the bedroom (their cabin is really warm).

Things start getting complicated when Melinda sees Rich asleep on deck with a lady ghost laying on top of him, kissing him, basically absorbing his life essence. The ghost is decked out in a dirty gown, looking a little under the weather, and disappears after noticing Melinda watching her. Melinda and Jim decide to get to the bottom of things. As it turns out, a woman jumped overboard the week before and the two assume the ghost of that woman is haunting Rich. But after Melinda hears the ghost refer to Rich as her fiance and Jim learns that Rich and Julia have been together since high school, they have to rethink things.

Melinda eventually decides that everything leads back to Rich and Julia’s cabin. The ghost is apparently stuck in a holding pattern, haunting any man who sleeps in the cabin, searching for her fiance. While searching for clues (having spotted the word AFT imprinted on the ghost’s back) on deck, Melinda has a vision of the ghost’s body being thrown overboard by a member of the crew. One thing leads to another and they realize that the crew member is question is none other than Bill Bradford, the author of a book chronicling the ship. He tells them he did toss a body overboard, but the woman was dead already. Melinda and Jim soon discover that the occupant of the haunted cabin when the woman died was Cliff Sturges, current owner of the ship.

Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start coming together. Lorelei, the ghost, had met Cliff Sturges in Rio and the two fell in love. She snuck aboard to be with him, saw Cliff being kissed by another woman, hid in an employees-only compartment and fell to her death. Cliff spent the next few decades wondering what happened to her while Bill was haunted by the act of throwing her overboard. As it turns out, there was no bad guy in the story. Cliff was breaking up with the woman his family had pressured him to marry, which explains the farewell kiss. Lorelei’s death was an accident. Thanks to Melinda, she crosses over (along with about twenty other ghosts) and Cliff is finally able to put the past behind him and ask his current girlfriend to marry him. Plus, he decides not to scrap the ship and instead turn it into a floating museum. As for Rich and Julia, with Lorelei no longer in the picture, they’re closer than ever.

Thus, everyone is happy in the end. Especially happy are Melinda and Jim when Melinda realizes she might be pregnant. It was nice for an episode to end with so many happy couples. Although not every episode of Ghost Whisperer has a murderer or a killer, many do involve bad things happening to good people at the hands of bad people. In “Save Our Souls,” although there is a dead woman, what happened to her was an accident. Everyone involved felt really bad for a really long time only to finally get everything out in the open and the air cleared.

(As a complete aside, the actress who played Lorelei, Peyton List, has been all over television the past few years. I’ve seen her on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Just Legal, Smallville, Windfall, Day Break, Moonlight, Big Shots, Mad Men and now Ghost Whisperer. Impressive.)

Delia was only in the episode for one scene at the very beginning, saying farewell to Melinda and Jim and informing them of the woman who jumped overboard (as it turns out, she faked her death to run off with the ship’s massueur). But considering that the bulk of the episode took place aboard ship, her absence was understandable. Why Melinda had to go and call Eli is less understandable. It really felt out of place. The explanation was that Melinda needed Eli to take the names and information about the twenty or so ghosts aboard ship who want to tell friends or family important things. But there really was no reason to involve him, aside from wanting to showcase the acting prowess of Jamie Kennedy.

All told, “Save Our Souls” was a wonderful episode. I hope there are many more like it during the rest of the season.